The 19th-century Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said that the ultimate passion of the human mind is to think the unthinkable or know the unknowable.
For him, this desire manifests itself in the essential urge to know God, that fundamentally paradoxical effort of the finite to grasp the infinite or the profane to experience the Divine. Ultimately, for Kierkegaard, the paradox extends even further such that, in the end, the only way for human beings to actually connect with God is through His exact opposite, sin.
Weird, huh?
But you don’t have to be proto-Existentialist Scandinavian Christian theologian to see what he was talking about; you can approach that contradictory mind-state of conceiving the inconceivable on purely materialist grounds, too: just imagine the unimaginable sequence of events that had to have transpired over the course of the last 13.7 billion years for the Universe to have unfolded in a way that makes it possible for 100 or so people riding bicycles to arrive on a warm August evening at a sylvan glade of mighty conifers and—thanks to the application of highly-distilled spirits and globalized capitalism—soon find themselves (due primarily to the largesse of one beloved neon-hued instigator) hurling their bodies down a hundred-foot long sheet of polyvinyl chloride and grappling with each other in a kiddie pool filled with non-toxic biodegradable jelly.
Oh. And thousands of glowsticks in all colors, too, turning mild-mannered software analysts into psychedelic gladiators from the planet Future.
Kierkegaard’s own mind would have blown to witness the impossible made possible: sunless rainbows, an outdoor interior, and even a lost key ring found.
Famously, he argues that a “leap of faith” is required for us to realize the Divine; maybe. But it sure seems like diving headfirst onto an inflatable alligator and careening down a slick plastic hill does the trick, too.
Fourteen billion years after the singularity expanded and here we are: shirtless, intoxicated, and glowing.
It’s inconceivable. Unimaginable. Unthinkable.
And Divine.
For him, this desire manifests itself in the essential urge to know God, that fundamentally paradoxical effort of the finite to grasp the infinite or the profane to experience the Divine. Ultimately, for Kierkegaard, the paradox extends even further such that, in the end, the only way for human beings to actually connect with God is through His exact opposite, sin.
Weird, huh?
But you don’t have to be proto-Existentialist Scandinavian Christian theologian to see what he was talking about; you can approach that contradictory mind-state of conceiving the inconceivable on purely materialist grounds, too: just imagine the unimaginable sequence of events that had to have transpired over the course of the last 13.7 billion years for the Universe to have unfolded in a way that makes it possible for 100 or so people riding bicycles to arrive on a warm August evening at a sylvan glade of mighty conifers and—thanks to the application of highly-distilled spirits and globalized capitalism—soon find themselves (due primarily to the largesse of one beloved neon-hued instigator) hurling their bodies down a hundred-foot long sheet of polyvinyl chloride and grappling with each other in a kiddie pool filled with non-toxic biodegradable jelly.
Oh. And thousands of glowsticks in all colors, too, turning mild-mannered software analysts into psychedelic gladiators from the planet Future.
Kierkegaard’s own mind would have blown to witness the impossible made possible: sunless rainbows, an outdoor interior, and even a lost key ring found.
Famously, he argues that a “leap of faith” is required for us to realize the Divine; maybe. But it sure seems like diving headfirst onto an inflatable alligator and careening down a slick plastic hill does the trick, too.
Fourteen billion years after the singularity expanded and here we are: shirtless, intoxicated, and glowing.
It’s inconceivable. Unimaginable. Unthinkable.
And Divine.
I think I'm going to have to go back through your older stuff, this was a great read.
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